


Slow Dance

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-11
Updated: 2006-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Slow Dance

The dance winds down in awkward strangeness, Apollo and Starbuck leaving the ring without meeting anyone's eyes and heading off in opposite directions. Helo figures she'll head for the Marine showers and Lee will get the Admiral to let him use the senior staff head and both of them will hide away like animals till the next shift, licking their wounds and wondering what the frak just happened.

It's a good question. Pretty much the whole crew is debating it at length while they pull down the ring and pack up the equipment and drift off to the locker room. Helo lingers until all but a few knuckledraggers are gone, helping to move the crates and canvas back to storage and lock them down tight. Sharon has CAP at shift-change and went to bed ages ago. Sweat has dried on Helo's skin and his hair crunches with salt when he runs his fingers through it. He definitely needs to hit the showers before he heads for the rack.

One of the perks of being in this odd limbo between being XO and...not anymore is that he can still get into the senior staff head. CAG should be long gone by now, but if he's not, Helo can look through and past him as well as anybody else. He doesn't know 100 percent what was going on in Lee's head, while they were in the ring or after, but for all that Helo was in Kara's corner at the dance he doesn't have a side in this fight. No bad blood, no ill will. He just doesn't want to deal with any more aggression tonight.

He comes around the corner and blinks, surprised to see Racetrack sitting in the corridor, leaning back against the wall by the hatch. "Maggie?" he asks, crossing over to her quickly. "You okay?"

"Mm." She winces at his hand on her shoulder and struggles to sit up a little straighter. "'m fine. Ishay let me out of the 'firmary and I wanted a shower."

"Why didn't you go down to the pilots' head?" he scolds gently, tracing his fingers over the blossoming bruise on her temple, the split and fattened lower lip. "Are you concussed, Mags?"

"No. Ishay called me clear. Just...sore. All over. This was closer." She shrugs, smiling a little, her eyes closed. "Figured you'd let me in."

"Kat rang your bell good, didn't she," he mutters, tugging her eyelid up to check her pupils anyway. She makes a face and swats at him, her movements quick and sure enough to reassure him. He sits back on his heels and glances at the hatch. "Apollo in there?"

"Dunno." She holds out her hands and he stands to help her up, shaking his head when he realizes she still has her wraps on. Infirmary must be running them through like clockwork. "Heard he'll be sleeping in the rec room tonight."

"Oh yeah." He props her up against the bulkhead and digs out his key to the hatch. "Him and Starbuck finally threw it out there for the whole ship to see. Dualla's going to have his dick in a jar under the rack."

"Funny, I think 'Buck's got a whole collection of those under hers." She won't let him take her arm, swatting irritably at him more when he tries, so he rests his hand on her shoulder and guides her into the head. "Starbuck and Apollo." She sounds out each syllable carefully, despite how it tugs her lip and makes fresh blood run out. "Those two are only happy if they're hurting. Only way they ever learned how to tell for sure that they're alive, y'know?"

"You got a better way, Mags?" he asks gently, taking her hands and starting to unwind the wraps. They're her own, not ship-issue, and bright blue. They're pretty against her pale skin and unexpected from the good, quiet, nothing-special Raptor-jock LT. Or so her evals from Tigh all say, filed away in the XO's office. "Competent. Capable. Unremarkable." The one set of reports Helo wrote up while they orbited New Caprica were more generous in giving credit, even though it didn't matter anymore.

"You gonna run the water or you gonna stare at my hands all day, Agathon?" She smiles, tearing her lip more, and he reaches out and wipes the blood away with his thumb. "And I think frakking's a hell of a lot better way to prove you're alive. Maybe the CAG and 'Buck should've tried that 'stead of fighting."

"What makes you think they didn't?" He tugs up on the hem of her tanks and she obediently lifts her arms, wincing as her shoulder rotates, and he makes a mental note to call her off if he sees her lifting in the gym over the next couple days.

"C'mon, Helo." She shakes her head, still smiling. "You don't think that either one of those two is a lot better in bed than being punched in the face?"

"I exercise my right under Article 23." He steps back and turns the water on, running his hand back and forth under the stream and waiting for it to warm up. "Speculating on that topic's likely to get me in trouble with the missus."

"Right." Her voice changes on that word, becoming clipped and odd, and when he glances over at her she's looked away, turning her body so her back's to him and her face averted, her fingers tangling in her dark hair as she tries to pull the band free. "Wouldn't want trouble there."

"Maggie..."

"Don't." That word comes out short and sharp, and she looks back over her shoulder at him with matching warning in her eyes. He holds up his hands in surrender and steps back, nodding at the shower.

"Water's ready."

"Thanks." She steps out of her shorts and walks over, closing her eyes and tilting her head back to rinse the blood and sweat from her face. He leans back against the wall, still dressed, and watches her. She glances over after a minute, pushing wet hair back off her face. "You're planning to just stand there and make sure I don't fall over?"

"Pretty much."

"You don't trust Ishay's trained medical judgment?"

"They've got a lot of bodies passing through down there tonight." He shrugs and thumps his head back against the wall. "And I've got nowhere to be."

"Better file that under Article 23, too." She turns back to the shower and punches the button to get a handful of soap for her hair. "Don't think Sharon would care to hear it."

"She understands when I want to be there for a friend."

"Is that what you're doing, Helo?" She laughs, sharp and broken and not at all amused. "Being here for me?"

"Making sure you don't slide down the drain and drown."

"She didn't hit me that hard."

"She hit you like a kiloton bomb."

"Yeah, well. Kat's got some anger issues." She glances back over her shoulder again and shrugs. "That's what the dance is for, right? Get it all out. Catharsis."

He nods and watches her, noting which movements are brought up short by pain and which ones carry through easily. All of them, every breath, is edged with tension so high he thinks she might crack, might fly apart into a thousand pieces that will run right down the drain. He won't be able to catch them then. It'll be too late.

Pilots don't cry, they can't, they're trained to forget how. Her breath moves in and out so roughly her whole body shudders, but her jaw stays clenched and her eyes stay clear and when she reaches for more soap from the dispenser her hand only shakes a little.

The dance is for catharsis, for release of aggression and anger. Solving problems and curing stresses and healing through violence. Helo understands the theory, and he even approves, but he thinks the Admiral's forgotten that there are other things people need for healing, things the Fleet doesn't have mechanisms and traditions to provide. Things like quiet, and comfort, and touch.

"Can you get me a towel?" she says, turning the water up and gathering her hair in her hands, wringing the water out and then twisting it into a coil at the back of her head.

He grabs one from the hook on the wall and she half-turns toward him, holding out a hand to catch it when he tosses it to her. But he doesn't; he unfolds it and walks across the room, ignoring her hands and wrapping it around her body himself, then letting his arms settle around her.

"What the frak do you think you're doing?" Her voice shakes, but she's still; his arms are high up on her chest, crossing just below the shoulders and above her breasts, loose around her so she can pull away with hardly any effort at all. She doesn't move, quivers of suppressed emotion running through her muscles, her head half-turned so she can look at him out of the corner of her eye.

He shrugs. "Being here."

"You're a frakking idiot, Agathon." She laughs and it tears in the center into a sob as she leans back against him, water from her body soaking through the thin towel into his clothes. Her body shakes harder with laughter and tears at once and he holds her tighter, still chaste as friends, still just there, but there with all he has to share.

They sway together in the dull mechanical light of the head, slow-dancing the night shift away.  



End file.
